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new neonliberalism: talked with paul and matt mcmanus about how the cold war foreclosed a lot of questions in both liberalism and socialism, and how its end--and elon's coup--have cracked open "the property question" once again www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RsE...

for many socialists, lenin's success in 1917 foreclosed the democracy question. the bolsheviks finally *did* the thing, and it's hard to argue with success! so you get vanguard party bullshit, command economies, all the most illiberal of illiberal socialisms

otoh, the necessity of opposing the ussr meant that for liberals, questions about the distribution of property were taken off the table. we might want a welfare state for *humanitarian* reasons, but inequality per se can't be a problem--and socialism needs to get written out of the liberal tradition

and so mcmanus' book is a kind of fascinating look at how much overlap there really is in the socialist and liberal traditions--arch-liberal john stuart mill, for instance, was *by his own admission* a socialist! www.routledge.com/The-Politica...

Wealth taxes are bad taxes. But for the purpose of preserving democracy something like a 100% tax on wealth above $1 billion seems a reasonable thing.

Like a bad thing about the US is it taxes you based on citizenship. But a nice thing about the US now is it taxes you based on citizenship so these billionaires can’t relocate and avoid the tax.

To avoid the insane market problems that would arise they can donate their excess assets in the first year to any non political foundation that will liquidate 4% of the assets annually. Hell this way they get to do what they should’ve always been doing, spending that money to make the world nicer.

bsky.app/profile/left...

i think it's useful to think about modernity as a kind of disaggregation of power--economic power, political power, social power are not as tightly intertwined as they used to be, and that's good. but they are still connected, and overweening power in any one arena undermines all the rest

Yeah; I didn't get to fit it in my original post, but economic power is highly convertible to political and social power. You either have to reduce convertibility of wealth to other forms of power, or reduce individual economic power. Probably both; no convertibility-reducing method is foolproof.

"let's just go back to normal" is a guaranteed loser. we need to promise america something new and *better* at the end of this.

Yes, but that new and better thing will probably involve UBIs, wealth grants, worker-owned businesses and public/mutual financial firms, not the elimination of private property and market exchange.

The thing about social democracy is that it’s an unsustainable halfway house. The wealth of the wealthy will slowly creep up again, and we’ll find ourselves right back here, unless private property is got rid of

Look at you guys getting caught up on 50+ years of socialist thought in a matter of like 5 posts. Better late than never

The Democratic Party’s snub of the working class in favor of the professional-managerial class in the early 90s was a critical misstep.

I really need to give The Greatest of All Plagues by Williams a read. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...